Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Futurepunk is the science fiction genre which does not exist yet. Here, at 1:16AM, I will theorize that it will exist and do so very abruptly over the course of the next five years. It will shock, anger, and perhaps even frighten the unready. It will be both a regression back towards cyberpunk's dread and driven attitude, and a progression away from this as its foundation. It will not have the sort of optimism of what we now coin as postcyberpunk. Instead it will reclaim Gibson's tough-as-shit optimism from Neuromancer, seeing the future as something to get both worse and better simultaneously, a something for everyone sort of deal.

But while the title of this blog "Tomorrow looks like a vicious yesterday" may imply strongly dystopian leanings of what futurepunk will be, the reality is never so simple. "Looks like" should be of key importance to any who study the phrase.

Now before I get too utterly pretentious in my prophecy (if it's not already too late,) I'll cut myself short. Suffice to say I had some notion of what was coming even if I couldn't quite articulate it. Perhaps you'll pass this by, chuckle and shake your head as if seeing that man holding cardboard sign "The end is nigh," in sharpie and capitals, that man mumbling and misquoting Revelations in some half-stupor, half-craze.